Assistant Professor Luis Rodriguez Jr. at Alfred University
On January 28, 2019, AU students were coached on obtaining their Volunteer Income Tax Assistant (VITA) certification.
VITA is a key component of their accounting and tax learning and serves to give practical experience and assist the local taxpaying community.
Alfred University is offering its first cross-disciplinary class between its College of Business and Engineering School on entrepreneurship and drone technology.
At the end of the course and lab, AU students will be able to take their drone commercial pilot licenses, and are eligible to assist in flying their drones over local farmland this summer in an effort to gather data that will be used to help local farmers increase their crop yield and health.
We thank the Appalachian Regional Commission for their $150,000 grant and Alfred University for matching that grant. This is an opportunity to attempt a daring and new and exciting inter-disciplinary program.
The Appalachian region faces well known and significant challenges to its economic growth, and the effectiveness of using experiential learning activities to teach technical skills and entrepreneurship is well documented. Within this context, the purpose of this grant is to promote economic growth in the Appalachian region by educating its workforce in drone technology and entrepreneurship in order to increase their current skills, develop new skills, and motivate the workforce to develop new business opportunities. Program graduates will then reinforce their new skills in the summer of 2019 by flying drones over local farms in order to gather data with the goal of increasing crop yield and health.
This project proposes to create programs at Alfred University that is expected to engage students in the Engineering and Business schools in: 1) Drone (UAV) Repair/ Maintenance; 2) Drone (UAV) Pilot Training and licensing; and, 3) Innovation Enterprise Entrepreneurship. These programs are credit-bearing for Alfred University students and provide certifications for non-students.
On December 7th and 8th at 1pm , students from ACCT371 were coached on obtaining their VITA certification for the next tax year.
VITA is a key component of their learning and serves to give practical experience and assist the local taxpaying community.
John Milligan spoke to our students on his experiences as a former Audit Manager at Coopers & Lybrand, and for the last 33 years Managing Principal at Milligan & Company, LLC.
For over 30 years, Milligan & Company has assisted Government agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations and private sector clients by performing compliance reviews and providing technical assistance and training in the areas of Grants Management, Transportation, Economic Development, Funding Strategies, Civil Rights, and Diversity, and Financial Internal Controls. Our team of nationally recognized experts delivers results by tracking and deploying best practices and responding to the changing needs and challenges of our clients and industries. Members of our team come from a diverse background, ranging from transportation executives to Certified Public Accountants.
Today, Alfred University faculty from the School of Engineering and the College of Business received an Appalachian Regional Commission grant to educate the local workforce in drone repair and maintenance, flight operations leading to a commercial drone flight license, and in entrepreneurship skills leading to business creation. The students will then work with local farmers by using drones to help increase crop yield and health.
We want to publicly acknowledge all the new friends we met on this journey and who supported us in this project, specifically:
We will need your continued support to make this project a success, and to use it as a platform to educate our students, and to attract drone research and commercialization to our community.
Thank you all, Fiat Lux!
The Alfred University Accounting Club hosted an open house with a series of accounting firms whose staff were AU Accounting alumni who discussed their experiences as new accountants, the new CPA exam, and other career advice.
